Applications were in fact frozen between March and November, so it's not surprising that the backlog has dropped, because there were no applications that could come between March 1 and what you were able to put out, the categories of people who can be admitted. So it's not surprising that it dropped, because the applications were frozen.
Since we're really talking about the supplementary budget, I have an area that I have a great deal of difficulty with. You are asking for $2 million to advertise. I was able to pull out some of former Minister Diane Finley's communication costs. I noticed that $1 million was spent advertising for Bill C-50. Bill C-50, of course, was the bill we were debating in Parliament, and this advertisement money was spent before this committee and Parliament actually had a chance to even approve the bill.
The amount that was spent on accommodation, for example, was $3,000. There were meals, there were transportation costs, refreshments, overtime. Printing was another $5,000. Advertisement to ethnic media was $915,000; to the mainstream media it was $24,000. The media buy was $7,000; the media plan was $48,000. That, to me, is not a good use of taxpayers' money—perhaps it's a good use for Conservative Party funding, because the bill wasn't approved at that time and it was still in Parliament.
So I can't see how we could possibly justify putting more money, $2 million, into a pot when we don't know for sure how it would be spent or not spent.
I searched high and low in the Citizenship and Immigration performance reports. I went to the plans and priorities document for your website. I looked at supplementary estimates. There really is no detailed analysis of how you're going to be spending this $2 million. So I have a great deal of difficulty supporting why we should be supporting these funds. There may be a controversial bill in front of us, and all of sudden there will be even more advertisement that's not necessarily coming from Parliament.
I have two other questions. The other one is that MyCIC is really supposed to do the e-application. I really think one of the reasons why we have a backlog is because we don't have the e-application for family class application, for skilled workers' application. It's only available for students.
In your performance report you said, “Over the next few years, CIC, together with its delivery partners, is moving towards implementing e-services and electronic processing for the full range of immigration and citizenship services.” There's no deadline as to when you're going to get there or how you're going to get there; there's no work plan precisely on how MyCIC will work. The system right now is quite opaque; it's not very transparent. People can't tell where the applications are, and, as a result, there is a lot of backlog, especially in the family class. It takes three to five years to bring in a family, a mother and father, and some even say that people die waiting. So that's an area I want to question.
The third, because I don't have a whole lot of time, is that Citizenship spent $73 million last year and this year you're only looking for $54 million. What are you cutting? It's important to welcome our new citizens, and that's a lot of money you're not putting in.